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Roundup: Election 2025, Day One

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Around noon on Sunday, prime minister Mark Carney visited Rideau Hall and advised the Governor General to dissolve Parliament for an election. She agreed, signed the proclamation, and the 45th general election was underway. The election will be held on April 28th, making it a short five-week campaign.

Mark Carney spoke afterward, and immediately promised a “Middle Class™ tax cut,” because clearly what’s needed in a time of economic uncertainty, and when we need to ramp up our defence spending and response to the economic predations of Trump, is a tax cut that will disproportionately benefit top income earners. Carney then headed to St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, for his first campaign stop.

Pierre Poilievre got his message out early, and he took a couple of mild jabs at Trump, before doubling down on his usual nonsense about “open border” creating crime (which is completely false), and insisted that his campaign offers hope and change, and insisted that they will “restore” the promise of the country. He then headed off to Toronto for a “Canada First™” rally.

Jagmeet Singh accused the Liberals of letting the country “rot from the inside,” and that he’s about people and not billionaires. (All tens of them in Canada?) From his initial Ottawa launch, he then headed to Montreal for his first stop.

And the Green co-leaders Elizabeth May and Jonathan Pedneault called for unity during the election in order to stand up to Trump and the global oligarchs that are seeking to destroy democracy.

In the background of all of this was an interview that Danielle Smith gave to Breitbart News in the US, where she claims that she told members of the Trump administration to hold off on tariffs in order to help get Poilievre elected, because he would be more in sync with them. This is pretty shocking, if she is indeed telling the truth and not just giving some kind of boast to make herself look good for the Breitbart crowd. Poilievre insists that Trump wants Carney to win because he’ll be a pushover, and I mean, come on. Carney gave his usual points about needing respect from Trump before they’ll talk. Nevertheless, the fact that we have premiers freelancing foreign policy like this is a Very Bad Thing and they need to be reined in.

 

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia launched 147 drones at several cities across Ukraine overnight Sunday, and killed at least seven. On Saturday, Russian shelling killed three in Pokrovsk. The blaze at Russia’s Krasnodar oil depot has been burning for over five days now.

https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1903740311689363767

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Roundup: Ford’s false “mandate” demands

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Ontario premier Doug Ford confirmed that yes, he will be calling an early election on Wednesday, and spouted a bunch of bullshit about needing a “strong mandate” to deal with Trump, which is fiction. He went so far as to call for the “largest mandate in Ontario history,” which veers dangerously close into one-party-state delusions. And incredibly, Ford said “So you better pray that we get elected, because I’m going to protect everyone’s job, including the media’s job,” which no he won’t, and then said, “Imagine Bonnie Crombie or Marit Stiles sitting across from President Trump negotiating a deal. It would be an absolute disaster. And God help us if that ever happens.” Premiers do not engage in international negotiations. Ever. That is explicitly outside of their jurisdiction. Ford is not going to negotiate with Trump, even if he thinks that “businessman to businessman” they can work something out.

This is pure distraction. Ford has been planning on an early election for months, and now he has Trump as a fig-leaf of an excuse. He wanted to go to an election before the federal election because he doesn’t want Pierre Poilievre to taint his chances in 2026, when the next election is supposed to be held, and he’s afraid of this nonsense “theory” that Ontarians like to have different parties in power federally and provincially. And by running against Trump, he figures he can distract everyone from his corruption (RCMP investigation ongoing) and absolute mismanagement of the healthcare system to the point of its collapse, his dismantling of the post-secondary education system, and the size of the deficits he’s been running after all of his lamentations about Kathleen Wynne’s record when he has done worse by absolutely every metric. But Trump? Well, that’s a real distraction, and his playacting the “Captain Canada” role has been helping him build that, even though he hasn’t actually filled any federal vacuum in leadership (there is a conscious decision not to react to every Trump utterance), and it’s already had the Baby Spice effect on people’s brains.

Meanwhile, his constant claims that he needs a “mandate” is a fraught political concept that doesn’t actually mean anything in a Westminster system. He has a majority legislature. His opposition parties are largely ineffective or in disarray (and he has invoked the Notwithstanding Clause to neuter third-party groups from campaiging against him). Those opposition leaders said they will support anything he needs to do to counter the effect of any Trump tariffs. His claims that he needs a “mandate” to do this is an import that doesn’t actually mean anything. He was elected to govern for four years—he doesn’t need to call an election every time a crisis comes up to say that he needs a “mandate” to deal with it. Nothing would get done if he did. This is naked self-interest, and it needs to be exposed as such, but the Queen’s Park media won’t, and I suspect that Uncle Doug will sail to another election victory, both because he continues to beguile the population, and the opposition parties continue to be useless. It’s absolutely embarrassing.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia launched a drone barrage against residential buildings in Kyiv overnight Friday, killing three. Russians claim they are about to overtake the town of Velyka Novosilka in the Donetsk region. Ukraine launched an overnight drone attack against one of Russia’s largest oil refineries in the Ryazan region, causing an explosion and damage. Reuters got access to the drone unit that is launching these long-range attacks into Russia to damage their war capabilities.

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Roundup: First ministers meet about the Trump threats

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Justin Trudeau will be meeting with (most of) the premiers today, to talk about the border plans in advance of Trump’s inauguration. Some premiers will be virtual, however, such as PEI premier Dennis King, who is currently on a bus trip to the northeastern states with a number of officials from the province. And it has already been noted that there are separate media availabilities after the meeting is over—the federal government in one location, the premiers moving to a hotel to have theirs.

In advance of the meeting, we’re hearing more pledges for “border officers” from Alberta, Saskatchewan and Quebec, and Doug Ford was once again chirping about the supposed absence of federal leadership until he had a meeting with Dominic LeBlanc yesterday at Queen’s Park, after which he suddenly changed his tune. At that point, he praised the federal plan as “phenomenal,” which pretty much goes to show that the federal government has been working on it, and that in not responding and lighting their hair on fire with every Trump utterance that they are keeping their powder dry.

I get why Trudeau and the government have been keeping their heads down, but they have also created a problem for themselves. They should probably have been sending stronger signals to the provinces that they are working on said plan and to shut up in public rather than undermine the country’s position, but it’s not like they’ll all listen—particularly those premiers who are keen to suck up to Trump. Nevertheless, if this PMO’s persistent problem is their inability to communicate, they appear to be making no effort to change that on their way out the door. Cripes.

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukrainian air defences shot down 58 out of 80 drones in an overnight attack on Tuesday, while Russian forces claim to have taken control of two more settlements in the Donetsk region. Ukraine launched a major missile and drone attack into Russian territory, destroying a storage facility holding guided bombs and struck a chemical plant making ammunition. Ukrainian soldiers are also being forced to deal with suicide attacks by North Korean troops.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1879180179613872494

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Roundup: Why Statute of Westminster Day matters

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Yesterday was Statute of Westminster Day, which most people don’t have a clue about in spite of it showing up on their calendars. It’s a hugely important day in Canadian history because it was a turning point in our sovereignty as it relates to our relationship with the UK—the creation of the Canadian Crown as a separate and distinct entity from the UK Crown. Canada and several other realms (Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Newfoundland, and South Africa) were all granted Separate Crowns because they decided that the Crown was indeed divisible (and in Canada, further divisible among the provinces), and that meant things like being able to control our own foreign policy.

The problem, of course, is that we’re not taught this. We may be taught that that the Statute gave us more control over our foreign affairs (at least, I was in my social studies classes in Alberta), but it was couched more in terms of the aftermath of the First World War—the Canadian Crown was entirely absent from that discussion. And if you look at Parliamentary accounts on Twitter, for example, not one of them mentioned the Crown as the reason why we gained that autonomy and independence. It’s the whole gods damned reason why, and we don’t celebrate that at all. It’s a real problem as to why we don’t have a grasp of basic civics in this country, and something we need to rectify.

https://twitter.com/OurCommons/status/1866908079763120189

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian troops overran or captured several Ukrainian positions near the strategic city of Pokrovsk. Ukrainians struck a Russian airfield near the Azov Sea with US-made missiles, and a Ukrainian drone hit police barracks in Chechnya.

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Roundup: Ford’s inaction on housing

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While so much of the focus in Ontario over the past few days has (deservedly) been about Doug Ford’s plan to send $200 cheques to everyone ahead of an early election call in order to buy votes (rather than doing anything about healthcare, education, universities, crumbling infrastructure, you name it), it has obscured from the reports that Ontario is not only badly missing its housing targets—it’s getting worse.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1851725607408742526

Housing is very much a provincial responsibility. That is the level of government that has the tools and the levers to affect housing, whether it’s legislating the zoning changes that cities are reluctant to engage in, or using their spending powers to build or repair social housing (like they’ve been promising to since the late eighties), or any number of things. Is Ford doing any of it? Nope. Are they banning municipalities from forcing excessive development charges that are raising the cost of housing? Nope. Are they doing absolutely anything other than trying to pad their housing numbers with long-term care beds? Nope. But instead, all of the blame continues to be put on Justin Trudeau for the housing situation, never mind that he has vanishingly few levers at his disposal (and when he points that out, every media outlet in the country freaks out and insists that he must somehow create some, because reasons).

Meanwhile, as Pierre Poilievre promises to cut two of the existing federal housing programmes to fund his GST cut on new houses under $1 million, here’s Mike Moffatt explaining why those programmes are necessary and why they should be adjusted and not cut, not that Poilievre is going to listen.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1851933649723105344

Ukraine Dispatch

The death toll from the Russian strike on a high-rise in Kharkiv have risen, and children are among the dead. Russians also attacked a strategic bridge in the Odesa region overnight. American intelligence indicates that there are now 8,000 North Korean troops in Russia’s Kursk region, and that they are expected to enter the fight against Ukraine in the coming days. President Zelenskyy has blasted allies’ “zero” response to the arrival of these North Korean troops.

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QP: The worst Halloween-themed response imaginable

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Neither the PM nor his deputy were present today, which was probably just as well considering what an absolute pathetic mess yesterday’s QP turned out to be. Most of the other leaders were also absent, but Pierre Poilievre was present and started off in French, and he selectively quoted the GDP figures released this morning, and claimed this was the government “destroying” the economy. Jean-Yves Duclos noted that inflation, interest rates and unemployment are all down, but it being Halloween, children should be afraid that Poilievre refuses to get his security clearance. Poilievre countered that diminishing paycheques are what is scary, took credit for all housing starts when he was “minister,” and demanded the government accept his GST proposal. Duclos noted that children could count to six, which were the number of affordable housing units he built as “minister” (not really true), and repeated the security clearance point. Poilievre switched to English to repeat his selective economic doom and demanded an election, to which Randy Boissonnault recited the good economic news about inflation. Poilievre gave some specious comparisons to American economic data, and this time Boissonnault recited the security clearance talking points. Poilievre continued to make facile and false claims about the economy, and demanded the government cut taxes. Boissonnault recited a bunch of non sequitur talking points about foreign direct investment in return.

Claude DeBellefeuille led for the Bloc, and demanded the government enrich OAS for all seniors, to which Marc Miller noted that the Bloc has consistently all measures the government has put forward to help seniors, including dental care. DeBellefeuille took a swipe at Duclos before repeating the demand, and this time Duclos said that they are simply looking for problems before noting that they have reduced seniors’ poverty since they came to office, and offered a warning about cozying up to Conservatives.

Alexandre Boulerice rose for the NDP to worry about software used by landlords to raise rents, and demanded an inquiry be launched. François-Philippe Champagne said he would ask the Competition Bureau do just that with the new powers they have been given. Bonita Zarrillo demanded the same in English, and Champagne repeated that they are going to ask the Bureau to do so.

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QP: Griping about the Colbert appearance

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The prime minister was still in New York, but his deputy was present once again, while the Conservatives were revved up because this was their Supply Day, and they were busy gathering clips from their prepared speeches in favour of their non-confidence motion. With that in mind, Pierre Poilievre led off in French, and he immediately demanded that the Bloc vote against the government. The Speaker warned him about questions being related to administrative responsibilities of government, but Jean-Yves Duclos stood up anyway to denounce that Poilievre told people dental care doesn’t exist. Poilievre again listed the government’s supposed failures to demand the Bloc vote against them, and Soraya Martinez Ferrada decried that Conservative MP Jeremy Patzer got a trip paid for to Florida from a pro-life church. Poilievre switched to English to recite slogans and demand an election, and Mark Holland listed things the Conservatives would cut. Poilievre accused Holland of coming unglued before saying completely untrue things about pharmacare and demanded an election. Holland pointed out his scare-mongering before saying that free diabetes medication and contraceptions are actually freedom. Poilievre again claimed that pharmacare would “ban women” from using their existing drug plans before trotting out the “nuclear winter” line to demand an election. Karina Gould got up to say that freedom doesn’t look like trips to Florida to meet with anti-abortion groups.

Alain Therrien led for the Bloc, and demanded “justice” for seniors via enhancing OAS, and Steve MacKinnon listed efforts to help seniors and that the Bloc voted against it. Therrien declared that seniors deserve better than partisanship, and again demanded the OAS enhancement. MacKinnon again noted that the Bloc has always voted against more help for seniors, including dental care.

Jagmeet Singh demanded the Liberals stand up to Doug Ford around private health care, and Mark Holland said that if he wants to talk courage, the NDP capitulated to the Conservatives when bullied. Singh switched to French, and swapped François Legault for Ford, but asked the same thing. Holland urged parliamentarians to stand up to what the Conservatives would do to the healthcare system.

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Roundup: Coordinating a Venezuela response

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Friday evening, a statement went out from Canada and some twenty-one other allied governments about the situation in Venezuela. This after a couple of weeks of certain Conservative MPs and some of the Elder Pundits of this country having meltdowns that we haven’t issued immediate condemnations of the stolen election or demands that the opposition leader be recognized as the winner by Canada (and Conservatives currently feel motivated on this file because Pierre Poilievre’s wife is originally from Venezuela).

Lo and behold, Canada was working in concert with allies both in the region and abroad to ensure that there is a common voice when it comes to calling on support for democracy and human rights in Venezuela, particularly because Nicholas Maduro has been cracking down on protesters and arresting them, no doubt with the support of his Autocracy Inc. fellows, who have helped the country evade sanctions up to this point. Having coordinated responses with like-minded allies is a very important thing, and should not be underestimated.

And because this is currently an Anne Applebaum fan account, let me point to her most recent book, Autocracy Inc.,which includes a large section on Venezuela, how Chavez turned it into a kleptocracy under the guise of “Bolivarian socialism,” how other autocratic nations have allowed it to evade sanctions regimes (though it seems that China has been a bit burned by the very same kleptocrats that have bankrupted the country), and how the democratic opposition has been building support in that country in spite of the Maduro regime. It’s a great read, and I would highly encourage you to check it out (while we’ve still got some summer left).

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine’s air force downed five Russian drones overnight Thursday, while Ukrainian authorities are urging civilians to evacuate from Pokrovsk before Russians arrive in the area. Advances continue in the Kursk region, in the hopes of convincing Putin to start “fair” peace talks. Reporters who have visit the Kursk region under Ukraine’s control finds that there is a trial of destruction in their wake. Here’s a look at how vigilant Ukrainian society has become around allegations of corruption, in this case around reconstruction of the damaged children’s hospital.

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Roundup: Vandenbeld’s side—and a warning

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Liberal MP Anita Vandenbeld penned an op-ed over on National Newswatch to explain her side of what happened at the Status of Women committee last week, which has led to her and her staff being targeted and harassed off-line (because this is one of the tactics that Conservatives also employ and pretend they don’t, even though they know full well that they send their flying monkeys at the people they single out over social media). It’s an illuminating read that has a lot more of the backstory about how this committee was operating under its previous chair, some of the procedural elements of what happened that got lost in the noise around the witnesses walking out (never mind that they were set up from the start), and some of the rationale behind why this is happening. Don’t get me wrong—I think she still made a mistake in trying to make the public pivot to the abortion study motion, but the rest of the piece is a good insight into the problems at hand.

“Following Trumps playbook, since becoming Conservative Party Leader, Pierre Poilievre has put out a narrative that Parliament is broken, and the institutions are rigged. The Status of Women committee was living proof that this narrative was not true. And so Poilievre had to destroy it.”

This is one of the most important points as to why things are happening the way they are, beyond the clip-harvesting exercises. It’s one of the primary reasons why the Conservatives have been going hard after Speaker Fergus, why they are abusing privilege in demanding reams of unredacted documents and demanding that the Law Clerk do necessary redactions and not trained civil servants, why they try to tie arm’s-length agencies to the government or prime minister personally. It’s all out of the same authoritarian populism playbook.

But while she pointed out, I feel the need to call out Power & Politics’ abysmal coverage of this issue yesterday, with the guest host (reading from a script on a teleprompter) saying that Vandenbeld’s “behaviour” led to her being harassed, and in the discussion with the Power Panel that followed, was dismissive of the “minutiae of parliamentary procedure” when that was one of the key cruxes of what happened. Procedure was quite deliberately abused, and it led to this confrontation. And the panellists themselves being dismissive of the overall problem, and giving the tired lines of “only five people in the country care about this,” or “I’m shocked that there’s politics in politics!” as though what has been happening is normal. It’s not. Institutions are being deliberately undermined and that is a very serious problem, and it would be great if the gods damned pundit class in this country could actually arse itself to care about that fact rather than just fixating on the horse race numbers for once.

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine says that it downed two Russian missiles and four drones overnight, but that shelling killed four people in the Donetsk region, and that homes in the Kyiv region were damaged by a drone attack the night before. There are unconfirmed reports of a Ukrainian force in the Kursk region of Russia, but Ukraine won’t confirm or deny.

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Roundup: Giroux tries his hand at semantics

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Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux is at it again, deciding that he wants to play talking head pundit rather than sticking to the confines of his job. Case in point was his report on the proposed Digital Safety Office, and his calculations around staffing and the costs thereof (which the Conservatives have disingenuously suggested was reason to kill said office should they form government, when we know it has nothing to do with the costs). But Giroux has decided to make some utterly incomprehensible musings, talking about how “Canadians need to decide” if this is just “bureaucracy” or “enforcement” of the Act.

I’m not even sure where to start here. For one, of course it’s enforcement—that’s the whole gods damned point of the office. And there will be cost recovery in the way of fees and fines from the web giants, but Giroux didn’t bother to calculate what those could look like, because apparently, he can only pull certain methodologies out of his ass, but not others. But to try and play semantic games about whether or not this is “bureaucracy” is frankly baffling. What exactly is he trying to say? How is this at all related to his statutory responsibilities of providing economic and macro-economic analysis? It’s not, and Giroux should know that if he wants to be a pundit, he should resign and actually go do that.

But that’s not all. Giroux put out another report that is disputing Canada’s defence spending vis-à-vis GDP, so that he can weigh in on the Narrative about our commitments to NATO (without any actual context). Giroux claims that we’ll be below because the Canadian Forces has been lapsing certain levels of spending (which is true, and also a sign why we can’t just budget even more money that they can’t spend), but beyond this, he also decided he was going to use his own calculations for the GDP denominator instead of the OECD calculation that NATO uses, because he knows better, apparently. I mean, why have an apples-to-apples comparison that’s actually useful when you can pull a bespoke method from your ass in order to make a point, which again, is not within his remit to be doing. I’m going to be generous and say that there is a legitimate point about lapsing spending, but whatever he’s trying to do here is hardly within the confines of his job description, and more in line with his desire to be a media star.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia launched a daytime airstrike against Ukraine that hit a children’s hospital in Kyiv, and which killed at least 41 civilians in total. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was in Warsaw to meet with the president of Poland to discuss strengthening air defences, as well as signing a bilateral defence cooperation agreement. Zelenskyy vowed retaliation for the strike, and called on allies to stand with him. Russia is claiming that Ukraine launched tens of drones at them, and that two power substations and an oil depot caught fire as a result.

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